Philosophy, Moral

INTRODUCTION

NATURAL LAW VERSUS SOCIAL CONTRACT

UTILITARIANISM

DEONTOLOGY

VIRTUE THEORY AND RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Moral philosophy is roughly the same as ethical philosophy—morals and ethics are virtually indistinguishable, moral being Cicero’s translation of the Greek term ethics or ethos, which meant the customs and manners characteristic of a country or city-state. Typically, one distinguishes the concrete level of moral behavior and judgments from a higher theoretical level where one reflects upon this concrete level and proposes higher-order ethical principles about ethical behavior and judgment (ethical theory).

Moral philosophy is ordinarily divided into three levels: applied ethics, normative ethics, and meta-ethics. Normative ethics is primarily concerned with two questions: (1) What actions should an individual perform? and (2) what states, properties, things, and persons are (morally) good or valuable? Ordinarily, a normative ethicist will propose answers to these questions in terms of normative principles—principles specifying what one ought to do. Applied ethics is concerned with the application of these normative principles to concrete areas such as social science ethics. Meta-ethics is concerned with the theory of normative ethics: Are ethical propositions true or false? What is the meaning of moral terms? What kind of reasoning can be advanced in support of ethical arguments? In the twentieth century meta-ethics dominated the field until midcentury, when normative theory made a gallant return. Since then all three areas have been actively pursued. The present discussion will be limited to normative ethics.

INTRODUCTION

Beginning with Socrates and Plato, philosophers have been concerned with the question of the nature of the good life and how one should attain it. It was the characteristic Greek view that an individual could reach this ultimate goal only as part of a larger social entity—the polis —of which he was an integral part. There was, therefore, little if any conflict between the individual’s real interests and the welfare of the larger community. In short, as Plato argued in The Republic, it pays to be moral because an individual can be happy in life, and thus attain the ultimate state of well-being, only if the individual has the property of justice. This view was characteristically Greek, and widely shared among Greek thinkers. For example, the Stoics believed that a concern for the well-being of all human beings was developmentally built into human nature, and that even though humans begin their lives as self-centered animals, they mature to the point where they are (and should be) concerned about all humankind; this constitutes natural law theory.

Such a view was denied or undercut by Christian thinkers, who tended to separate self-interest and altruism sharply and to argue for the importance of the latter to the detriment of the former. At the same time, however, Christian thinkers such as Augustine (354–430) appropriated the ethics of Plato together with Stoicism to form the characteristic Christian view of ethics that Friedrich Nietzsche later reviled in the nineteenth century. In the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas appropriated the ethical views of Aristotle and wed them with the natural law tradition of the Stoics to argue that being ethical was built into human nature, where being ethical meant obeying the laws of God.

NATURAL LAW VERSUS SOCIAL CONTRACT

Historically, therefore, the key issue of ethics has concerned the self-interest of the individual (egoism) in relation to the welfare of others (altruism), with ethics pertaining primarily to actions that involve the welfare of others. A key distinction was that between natural law theory and social contract theory, which maintained that morality was conventional, not natural, and tied to the social conventions of one’s larger society. Hence, being moral was not part of human nature, but rather imposed upon human nature by society.

Both of these issues—egoism versus altruism, and natural law theory versus social contract theory—emerge in clear relief in modern times in the views of Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), Samuel von Pufendorf (1632–1694), and especially Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), the most important ethical theorist of the seventeenth century. In his immensely influential work Leviathan (1651), Hobbes clearly set forth an influential version of the social contract theory, in which he maintained that people originally existed in a state of nature without social laws or morals. This is a state of “all against law,” unbridled egoism, in which life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” (p. 92). People come together, Hobbes said, and agree to a social contract whereby they give up some of their liberties and rights in exchange for the security lodged in a larger system of law and order, which protects their interests. According to Hobbes, one behaves morally because of the benefits one receives from doing so; in short, because it is rational to do so. However, if one could benefit oneself by disobeying a moral convention without getting caught, it would be rationally defensible to do so. In a sense, therefore, morality is based upon rationality, and the kind of rationality present here is the economic rationality present in rational choice theory—pursuing those behavioral means that are most likely to result in the ends one desires.

Similar social contract theories can be found, in substantially different forms, in the works of John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, and even Immanuel Kant. These are the main representatives of the social contract tradition.

The natural law theory also has its famous modern agents. Locke, who was also a representative of the social contract tradition, argued that human beings had certain “natural rights” given to them by their creator, who had hardwired these rights, as it were, into human nature. There is, Locke argued, a natural psychological law governing how human beings act, based upon their desires. It is natural for humans to strive to satisfy these desires, and it is the duty of others to allow them to pursue these interests. Locke is thus a classical liberal (like John Stuart Mill) and the inspiration for later libertarianism.

UTILITARIANISM

Hobbes said individuals behave morally out of fear of the government, but one could also argue that there are elements of human nature that support this. This was the view of David Hume and Adam Smith, who argued against both the natural law tradition and the social contract tradition. According to Hume and Smith, humans are born with certain moral sentiments or feelings of sympathy for their fellow creatures. These feelings, a basic part of human nature, motivated individuals to care about others and to take into consideration their interests and needs. Hence, it was not rationality so much as it was emotional makeup that turned us into moral creatures.

For subsequent, post-Enlightenment thinkers, the conflict between natural law and social contract theory gave way to what is one of the major moral philosophies of modern times: utilitarianism. Although the writings of earlier individuals such as Hume contained utilitarian themes, it was Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill who set forth the theory of utilitarianism: One should always act so as to produce the greatest benefit for the greatest number of individuals. This is a version of consequentialism, the view that it is the consequences of an action (or a rule governing that action) that determine its moral acceptability. As such, it has been interpreted as a commitment not to egoism, nor to altruism, but to universalism—treat everyone (including oneself) as an individual and determine the total amount of happiness to be produced by an action. Twentieth-century thinkers proposed several important modifications in this formulation, notably “rule utilitarianism,” which maintains that an action is right or wrong in virtue of the good or bad consequences of the rule under which it falls.

DEONTOLOGY

In Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thought, the philosophical debate about ethics has, until fairly recently, turned on the question of the adequacy of utilitarianism in relation to its historical rival—deontology (sometimes called “formalism”). Deontology is the view that there are fundamental human duties that are independent of their good or bad consequences; some actions are morally right or morally wrong by virtue of certain inherent properties in the actions themselves, for example, by virtue of their possessing or not possessing certain rational properties such as universalizability, reversibility, and so on. Immanuel Kant is the most famous deontologist (although in the twentieth century other individuals such as W. D. Ross championed a somewhat similar cause). Kantian ethics is concerned with advocating absolute duties (prohibitions) against lying, killing, and so on. The basis of such absolute duties derives, Kant thought, from the moral agent’s rational nature pure and simple, by virtue of one’s unique nature as a universal lawgiver (prescriber). There are several formulations of Kant’s famous “categorical imperative”: “Act as though the maxim of your action becomes by your will a universal law of nature” (2002, p. 222). and “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in any other person, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means” (2002, pp. 229–230). Both formulations of the categorical imperative were rooted in our rational nature as autonomous agents.

VIRTUE THEORY AND RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY

The classic moral debate typically has been presented to be between utilitarianism and deontology, although recently virtue theory has become a third contender. According to virtue theory, exemplified especially by Aristotle, a morally proper action is one that flows from an internal moral virtue or good character trait of the moral agent. From the point of view of social science (especially psychology and economics), the status of moral principles has always been somewhat problematic. Assuming that such social sciences are empirical (“positive”) sciences and hence concerned with ascertaining the factual nature of the social world, how can normative principles fit into such an empirical science?

According to the now-classic distinction championed by Hume and Kant and pressed even further by G. E. Moore (1873–1958), the fact-value (is-ought) distinction is a categorical one in which one can never proceed to draw an inference from a factual statement to a statement about values, or “oughts.” Hence, if the social sciences are concerned exclusively with factual matters, the status of ethics in the social sciences has always remained problematic. If one is to have a unified, consistent empirical social science, committed to naturalism (in which only the natural world exists, and one can obtain knowledge only by employing the methods of the natural sciences), one might study ethical behavior empirically, describing how people actually behave or think about morality, or one might avoid ethical principles altogether (because they fall outside the realm of positive science). The latter course is problematic because the social sciences are knee-deep in value judgments and normative principles (e.g., don’t fake your data, don’t harm your research subjects, etc.). Furthermore, at least in the case of economics, assumptions about rationality are unavoidable: Economic behavior seems to presuppose that the economic agent is a rational one pursuing one’s preferences (desires, utilities) in a rational (instrumental) way. The only possibility, therefore, would seem to be a naturalistic ethics: Produce and rationally defend a set of normative principles, but do so in a completely naturalistic way. One candidate for such a naturalistic ethics is modern contractarianism.

Rational choice theory is a descendant of utilitarianism, with a change from interpersonal preference functions to Pareto preference functions (this occurred in the early twentieth century). Contractarianism is a descendant of the social contract theory of Hobbes and has two versions: Hobbesian contractarianism and Kantian contractarianism. John Rawls (1921–2002) is the best-known Kantian contractarian (or “contractualist”), who attempts to establish a set of normative principles involving justice on the basis of what individuals would agree to in an original state of nature (the original position). However, this position begins with normativity already built in (because individuals are under “a veil of ignorance”). For many individuals, such a view is not sufficiently naturalistic. The other view is Hobbesian contractarianism, in which the goal is to derive normative principles involving justice from an original position in which nothing normative is presupposed, except the notion that the agents are rational agents attempting to maximize their utilities (preferences, desires). The main philosophical representative of this theory is David Gauthier (b. 1932), although there are social scientists who also advocate a similar position.

Beginning with the “prisoner’s dilemma,” Gauthier (and others inspired by this approach) attempt to show that certain kinds of prisoners’ dilemmas (e.g., iterated versions) will necessarily result in cooperation, promise keeping, and justice. In short, according to this model, it is possible to show that it is rational to engage in moral behavior—understanding “rationality” in something like the standard economic sense (i.e., instrumental rationality). If such a proposal were plausible, and many doubt that it is, one would have a naturalistic ethics for the social sciences. An alternative account, one going back to Hume and Smith, would be to argue that altruism is innate in humans, that we are born with feelings of sympathy, and that such feelings are a sufficient ground to justify moral principles. There are, of course, other versions of naturalistic ethics, and many moral philosophers are skeptical of such attempts to construct a naturalistic ethics. This applies, for example, to contemporary Kantians who reject all attempts to naturalize ethics. If they are correct, then insofar as the social sciences depend upon moral principles, the social sciences would be unable to rationally ground such principles using standard social science methods and methodology. This would, once again, raise the question of the adequacy and hegemony of the social sciences—at least a certain conception of them—and thus, indirectly, of our scientific worldview. Needless to say, such an issue remains a crucial one to address in reflections upon the status of the social sciences in the twenty-first century.

SEE ALSO Bentham, Jeremy; Economics, Classical; Enlightenment; Ethics; Hobbes, Thomas; Hume, David; Kant, Immanuel; Libertarianism; Locke, John; Maximin Principle; Mill, John Stuart; Philosophy; Plato; Prisoner’s Dilemma (Economics); Prisoner’s Dilemma (Psychology); Rawls, John; Scottish Moralists; Smith, Adam; Social Contract; State of Nature; Utilitarianism

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aristotle. 1999. Nichomachean Ethics. Trans. Terence Irwin. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.

Axelod, Robert M. 1984. The Evolution of Cooperation. New York: Basic Books.

Bentham, Jeremy. [1789] 1948. An Introduction to the Theory of Morals and Legislation. Oxford, U.K.: Basil Blackwell.

Danielson, Peter. 1992. Artificial Morality: Virtuous Robots for Virtual Games. London: Routledge.

Frankena, William K. 1963. Ethics. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Gauthier, David. 1986. Morals by Agreement. Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon.

Grotius, Hugo. [1625] 1925. The Law of War and Peace. Trans. Frank W. Kelsey. Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon.

Hausman, Daniel, and Michael E. McPherson. 1996. Economic Analysis and Moral Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Hobbes, Thomas. [1651] 2004. Leviathan. New York: Barnes and Noble.

Hume, David. [1739–1740] 1978. A Treatise on Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge and P. H. Niddith. Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon.

Hume, David. [1772] 1965. The Original Contract. In Hume’s Ethical Writings, ed. Alasdair MacIntyre, 255–273. London: Collier.

Kant, Immanuel. [1785] 2002. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. Thomas E. Hill Jr. and Arnulf Zweig. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.

Kant, Immanuel. [1793] 1991. On the Common Saying, “This May Be True in Theory, But It Does Not Apply in Practice.” Kant’s Political Writings. Trans. H. B. Nisbet. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Locke, John. [1690] 1980. Second Treatise on Government, ed. C. B. Macpherson. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.

Mill, John Stuart. [1863] 2002. Utilitarianism, ed. George Sher. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.

Moore, George. 1904. Principia Ethica. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. [1886] 1989. Beyond Good and Evil. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Random House.

Plato. 2004. The Republic. Trans. C. D. C. Reeve. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.

Pufendorf, Samuel. [1672] 1964. On the Law of Nature and Nations. Trans C. H. Oldfather and W. A. Oldfather. Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon.

Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Reynolds, Paul. 1982. Ethics and Social Science Research. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. [1762] 1950. The Social Contract and Discourses. Trans. G. D. H. Cole. New York: Dutton.

Schelling, Thomas C. 1960. The Strategy of Conflict. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Skyrms, Brian. 1996. Evolution of the Social Contract. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Smith, Adam. [1759] 2002. A Theory of Moral Sentiments. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Ullman-Margalit, Edna. 1977. The Emergence of Norms. Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon.

Richard F. Kitchener

moral philosophy. The branch of philosophy which explores questions of what is good and right apart from any considerations derived from a supernatural revelation; it examines the nature, meaning, and justification of moral concepts.

PHILOSOPHY, MORAL.

This entry includes four subentries: